Kissing Carrion (15 page)

And every time, he left saddened in a way that made me sad just to witness it: Revolted, horrified, shaken to his unshakable core by the spectacle of his mother stuck behind bars, penned and prowling restlessly as a lioness confined to a stall built for dogs.

“They're never gonna put me in a cage,” he told me, with equal emphasis on all parts: Not them, not me, not a
cage
. Not
ever
.

Oh, no.

I kept my opinions on the subject to myself, for then. Things had already gotten complicated enough once news got around, and my friends started telling me I was screwing Hitler. I'd scoff:
Rommel
, maybe. After all, he'd never said anything too repulsive to bear without response about non-white people around
me
. . .

And was that rationalization? Bet your ass. And did I need it, just to make my own behavior endurable, and still dream myself moral?

Not—

—as much—

—as I
should
have.

I told myself what Karl told me—that he didn't really give a damn about “the Cause,” about paramilitarism, neo-Nazism, racial Separatism, any kind of ism. That all he really cared about was the grail he pursued to the exclusion of virtually everything else: The maddeningly elusive goal of evolution—or
de-
evolution—into his own “natural” animal form.

It was the second part of Karl's creed, the one he'd been left to come up with all on his ownsome . . . a Frankenstein faith patched together from romance and ritual, mythology and madness, snips and snails and old wives' tales. Put simply, he aspired to remake himself into a
berserkgangr
, or berserker—a bestial warrior-poet, Odin's champion, intoxicated with blood-mad ecstasy, who could wade into battle naked except for his totem animal's flayed hide, the ritual bear-shirt.

Pretty nutty, huh? So much so that even other Aryans considered Karl cracked. To the Far Right Christian coalition he was a renegade, an unrepentant Pagan, maybe even a devil-worshiper. Straight-up paramilitarists, meanwhile, thought his time would be better spent fighting the good fight on a battlefield the rest of them could share—down here on earth, where the usual weapon of choice is rocket-launchers, not shape-shifting.

But Karl didn't care what they thought. He truly believed this state of holy fury was the true nature of every white man—
his
true nature. What he wanted to be.
Could
be, with just a little more . . .

. . . application.

Go out into the woods, find your bear, kill it and wear its skin—into battle. And then—

“Battle?”

“Find a fight, get in it; shit, baby, what'd you think I meant?”

(I mean, this ain't
rocket
science, here.)

“Okay: Skin, battle. Because . . . ?” I prompted.

“'Cause that's how you change.” A pause, while I took this in. Adding: “Won't work if it's not
your
bear, though.”

“And you know this—how?” I asked. He just shrugged. And replied, simply—

“'Cause it hasn't worked yet.”

( . . .
yet
.)

* * *

Skirting the lake, Karl's key already pulse-warm beneath my shirt; haven't driven this route for two presidencies, but it's not like I have to check the map. So I here I sit, letting the engine's drone pull me past an endless panorama of long-forgotten sense-memory material: Grey walls of rocks, green-brown blur of trees—reflected light lapping back and forth, setting sun gone liquid all along the shore. Berkana in water, my tattooed rune's next logical reading made flesh. Synchronic or coincidental, sports fans?

(
You
decide.)

The books agree, mainly: A time for self-assessment, for inward thinking. A time to relax, and count your blessings.

And:
Ten years
, I think, as I take the next hill.
Three with Karl, seven without.

Ten . . . whole . . . years.

(Christ.)

Because sure, I know you must all be saying to yourselves, right about now: The sex sounds good, but there has to have been
something
else to keep Lee with this nutcase after the lovin' was done, smart guy that he obviously are. Right? I mean, let's not fool ourselves—freak sex, good or not, is kind of like pure Scotch: You can only drink it every day for just so long, before your insides spring a leak.

So what was I doing, exactly, while those initial years flew by—besides letting Karl have his wicked way with me anytime he wanted, that is? Well—

—not . . . a lot.

But lest you think I just lay there and took it the whole damn time, I might as well mention the other primary component of the whole Lee/Karl melange—the not-so-hidden character flaw Karl sniffed out in me that very first night, and lovingly nurtured every subsequent second we shared: My aforementioned temper, which tends to range—on a daily basis—from simple finger-snap snarkiness to outright barfight-picking piss-artistry. I've struggled with it all my life, and turning out gay has neither helped nor hindered, especially since the men I sleep with usually seem just as uncomfortable with my sudden flare-ups as those few women I forced myself to get jiggy with ever were. More so, in fact—because most guys don't really know
how
to deal with rage, except by producing some of their own.

Not Karl, though. He didn't want to be placated, or reassured, or soothed. Culturally, conflict was his medium; he expected it, required it.

Hell, he reveled in it.

“'Anger management problems,'” he repeated, after I—reluctantly—let slip the reason I still saw a psychiatrist twice each week. “You.”

I felt heat boil across my face, jaw- to hairline. “Yeah,
me
. So?”

“Like when you get riled you go all psycho, that it?” I stayed silent, as he continued, teasingly: “C'mon, seriously—like you can't think? And you see red? And when some guy keeps comin' after you, you start wantin' to rip his guts out with your bare hands?”

Teeth gritted: “Something like that, yes.”

He chuckled, deep in his throat—came in close, doing that looming thing again. But this time, my blood was up. I showed him my teeth, all white and sharp . . . and he just laughed again, even harder, at the sight of them.

“Naw, don't think so” he said. “Little pretty kitty fag-boy you? Be serious.” Leaning closer, showing me his: Bigger, whiter, sharper. “Believe
that
when I—”

—see it?

(Well . . . okay.)

And then, with a growl, I was on him—had him on his back, struggling, before he even had time to count his losses. We went at it hand to hand, no holds barred. I kneed him hard in the groin; he roared but sucked it up, cracking me across the jaw so hard I bit my own lip. Finally, as I hissed blood, he got his knees between mine and spread them hard, pinning me. I raked his face, so he flipped me, bit into my nape, and gave a flesh-smothered crow of surprise and delight. Rumbling, while I thrashed beneath him—

“Ah, now—that's better.”

I bucked up like a hard-rode horse, made it to my knees—then froze as he slipped into position, humping me higher, drawing a helpless moan. So quick, for all his bulk. And the touch of him, raising hairs where I barely knew I had them—so raw, so rank, so right. So utterly, unnaturally Goddamn . . . natural.

“This,” he told me, firmly, “this's how it should be. Way you're feelin', that ain't something you
manage
—that's an ancestor-gift, Lee, pure and simple. The very best part of your heritage.”

Trying to unseat him, and failing miserably. I gave one last half-hearted flail, one last hoarse groan, then managed:

“This's me getting pissed, that's all. Nothing more, nothing—”

A snort. “That's your
bear
, Lee, lookin' out through those baby blues. Sayin' ‘hi' to mine . . . ”

( . . . the way bears do.)

All hot breath and hunger, carrion-rank, honey-sweet. Grappling and snuffling. All claws and jaws and
blood
in every part of me, pumping me hard enough to pop on contact. Making me feel alive in a way I've never felt since: Not then, not now. Not before. And sure as hell not—

(after)

“Oh, shit,” I hissed, finally. “Just . . . shut the fuck up and fuck me, you fucking freak.”

Another grin, into my spine. “Whatever you say—”

(shield-)

“—brother.”

Karl didn't just accept my unsociably low tolerance for annoyance, he encouraged it; we'd fist-fight as foreplay, go straight from making bruises to licking them. While all the men around him had been trained to try and
keep
their tempers—keep them on a leash, keep them in check—if Karl felt it, you knew it. It was like breathing to him, like sex. Like prayer. For Karl, rage was a means to its own end, its own energy and its own purpose: A negative rush, infinitely destructive and potent. It was meditation, masturbation, sex and drugs and rock and roll, all rolled up into one. An in-body out-of-body experience. Losing yourself.

Or, maybe—

—finding yourself.

“These guys I run with,” he said, “they're weekend warriors, mostly. Talk big, sure, but ain't nothin' under their skin worth the lettin' out.
You
, though . . . ” He paused. “You could go all the way, you wanted to.”

“All the way where?”

Well . . .

. . . that'd be the question.

(Wouldn't it?)

Wherever Karl went, I suppose, all those years ago. Wherever he left me for, after I—finally—

—left
him
.

I try not to think much about that last night we spent together, if I can help it. That time we went up alone, just the two of us, with no disciples invited—when we built a fire so big it felt like we were cooking in our own sweat and fucked in every splintery corner of the house Karl's Grampaw built, ‘till we were both so hot and tender we could barely move. And then, when everything was at its peak . . . when Karl, who never drank, had already downed what seemed like a potentially fatal load of fermented honey-mead he'd bought from some fellow Viking-obsessed freak in the Society for Creative Anachronisms, and made me match him slug for slug from a couple of dirty steins . . .

. . . then, if I force myself, I can just about barely remember what it felt like to find him pulling me outside by my hair, holding me upright against the wind and pointing me towards the trees. Crooning so low I could hear it move through his chest and into mine, like some subsonic earthquake-warning; pressing a knife—a Goddamn *knife*, serrated blade long as my femur—into my limp right hand, and telling me:

C'mon, Lee—tonight's the night. Can't you feel it comin'? My—

(
our
)

—bear.

Naked, sweating, barely upright. His fist on my hip, over that left-side swastika—fingers spanning my thigh, nudging my half-hard cock. Steering me by it, practically, like it was a magic wand that'd make me do whatever he wanted me to . . .

( . . . whatever . . . I wanted to.)

Because here's the truth, all right? It was never what Karl wanted that scared me. It was the part of me that desperately
wanted
to be what he wanted—to do whatever it took to keep him with me, on me,
in
me. The insatiable part. The angry part. The—

(
bear
part)

That voice, murmuring—was it even coming from him, anymore? Or from somewhere deep inside me?

So c'mon, baby: Into the woods, knife out. And I'll get mine, and you'll get yours, and we'll be together, always—

Hunt together. Kill together.
Eat
. . . together—

(—forever.)

And at the last second, the very last second possible . . . I turned, and I dropped the knife, and I punched him in the face, so hard I broke a knuckle. And then I took off, running. And I have never looked back, never. Not
ever
.

* * *

. . . 'till now.

* * *

Say it with me, once again: Right
now
. Which is when I find myself turning sharp off this last, gravel-paved trace of road—eyes burning, neck stiff, limbs fatigue-cramped, with memory still lodged bone-deep and burning sharp in every part of me, like too much lactic acid after a long, hard race. When I pull over into the trees at the bottom of Karl's hill, turning the engine off, getting out, kicking my joints awake again . . .

Then look up, squinting into the sun. And easily spot, even through seven years' worth of encroaching overgrowth, the door of what that blond kid says Karl's
will
says is (from this moment on) “my” cabin.

The key still works, albeit with a rusty click. Inside I find a homespun panorama of decay—wood-rot and silence, dust rising like ghosts, screen-doors black with caterpillar corpses, cobwebs laden deep with mummified flies. That oil-lamp we used to see by, its wick only half-burnt, waiting for a match's kiss; that unvarnished pine table-and-chairs set Karl once bent me across, splintery as ever. That same fireplace, full of cold ashes.

And everything I touch, everything I don't—just, plain, everything—still smells . . . exactly . . .

. . . like Karl.

Musty, musky. Earthy as a cave. Like somewhere you can sleep all winter, hibernate 'till spring—live off your own fat and dream,
willing
yourself into another shape by the time you finally wake.

(And how the fuck can that be, anyway? After seven
years
?)

I feel a shiver go up my spine at the very thought of trying to answer that particular question, quick and cold as the phantom lick of a long, grooved tongue.

Because: It's been quite the ride for me, one way or another. And now that it's finally over, I find I have almost no idea—

(good
or
bad)